IMS

The IPCC announced they will be changing their name and altering their coverage to IMS becoming the IMS Forum. Michael Khalilian and his team at the IPCC have done an amazing job for the VoIP industry. The association started as the Softswitch Consortium and has now evolved into the IP Multimedia Subsystem. This is huge news and is great for those companies looking to get into IMS as this association should further the needs of service providers and equipment providers alike.

For more information check out the IPCC website until the new IMS Forum site is up and running.

As part of my first Publisherâs Outlook in the upcoming IMS Magazine I asked some industry experts what they thought about the IMS market. Here is the result of our e-mail discussions:

Please describe IMS.

Grant Henderson, Executive Vice President of Marketing and Strategy, Convedia -The IMS is the most recent refinement of an IP-based enhanced services architecture. The 3GPP, by embracing proven technologies from early wireline VoIP service architectures, and then adding important IP-based mobility service features, have defined an enhanced services architecture with universal industry relevance and appeal.

Paul Longhenry, VP Business Development, Sonim Technologies -IMS is a standardized application delivery framework designed to provide a common switching element that wireless, wireline, and cable carriers can use to rapidly deploy, integrate, and manage all SIP-based services.

Kevin McCracken, Director of Product Management, NewStep Networks -IMS is a core network framework that is intended to enable the development and delivery of new services that can be delivered across any type of access network to any type of device. IMS capitalizes on IP and SIP to break free of proprietary, vertically integrated, core network platforms (e.g., voice switches) that restricted what services could be deployed, and how they could be deployed.

This article will be a portion of my first column in Volume 1, Issue 1 in the new TMC launch, IMS Magazine.

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Never before in my history in the telecom space have so many agreed on something so quickly. IMS is supposed to take over the world. It will unify wireless, wireline and all communications like never before. It will allow small developers to develop applications and deploy them to networks with millions of subscribers overnight.

I have now been asked three times in one day what the trends were from the last Internet Telephony Conference & Expo last week in Ft. Lauderdale, Fl. I would have to say that the fixed mobile convergence and IMS conference tracks had a tremendous amount of energy and were standing room only. These sessions were just about as exciting as it gets and conferees and speakers seemed to feel that the audience was thirsty for more information. We have been asked by more than one speaker to dedicate more time to these sessions just to allow for the large amount of Q&A.

At the opposite end of the VoIP spectrum is IP contact centers where the sessions were also standing room only. The contact center market had seemed to slow for a few years.

If there is a single trend I have observed this week it is that VoIP is really happening. I spent a good deal of time interviewing companies exhibiting at the Internet Telephony show and they told me that the buyers at this show are more serious than ever. Many companies are selling product on the show floor.

I am further blown away by the international nature of VoIP. This week I have seen more and more service providers and enterprises coming from Africa, Asia, Latin America and everywhere else.

At the networking receptions the most frequent discussions I heard were about SIP, IMS, SOA and VoIP security.

The keynotes at Internet Telephony Conference & Expo keynotes kicked off today, the first day of this four-day event, with Mark Spencer of Digium/Asterisk to a huge audience.
Mark started his talk by saying that his company runs VoIP on a network that is as he calls it "the the worst case scenario" and doing so allows them to find out if products are broken before others find problems. As developers they are thrilled to run on a network not designed for perfect voice delivery but not everyone in the company is as excited by this strategy (for obvious reasons).

Spencer says he also has to be sensitive to customer calls as people associate telephone quality with the products you make. Mark mentioned that his phone system was recently inundated by callers looking for a very funny message (Mark indicated the sound clip is available on CD and did not explain how you could hear it if you missed the conference). The message is a funny take off on a busy call center.

President George W. Bush is expected to nominate telecommunications lawyer Robert McDowell to fill the third Republican seat on the five-member Federal Communications Commission according to a story from Reuters. This news is crucial to the future of telecommunications because McDowell serves as senior vice president and assistant general counsel at Comptel, a group representing companies that primarily compete against big telephone carriers like AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications.

It may not be common knowledge that AT&T was a powerful lobbying force against the incumbent telephone companies and the acquisition of the company by SBC has reduced the competitive lobbying burden on all LECs proportionately.

It goes without saying that if McDowell is nominated it will be a big win for consumers in 2006 as I expect McDowell to be pro competition. Not faux competition with concepts like tiered-Internet services being thrown around in an effort by incumbent providers to hold content providers and consumers hostage.

In the worst case scenario McDowell will be outvoted repeatedly but at least will ensure the American people have a strong ally in the FCC. Comptel has been perhaps the most vocal critic of FCC Chairmen Michael Powell and Kevin Martin and as such it may be a bit awkward to have McDowell as a commissioner at all.

Still, I hope the commissioners and the Bush administration realize that putting a pro competition pro CLEC representative on the commission is exactly what we need to ensure we have balanced dialogues in the FCC and the interests of the average Joe are always represented.

The SIP market is growing so quickly it is exciting that it defies growth projections. I wrote about SIP just today and how the standard is now so closely intertwined with VoIP, it is tough to see where one technology stops and the other picks up. Incidentally the first issue of SIP Magazine is printed. I havenât seen it but will get my hands on a copy tomorrow.

It is also great see that a single standard like SIP has emerged as something we can all rally around. What may have really slowed industry growth in years past was a plethora of standards that sewed more confusion in the market than necessary. When you have so much confusion in a market you slow purchasing and the industry can't get off the ground effectively. I think we donât have that problem anymore and now the challenge for the industry is to ensure we donât have to fear a two-tiered Internet that chokes our access to consumers.

SIP turned out to be not only a standard that was logical for the market to adopt but it also benefited from being the standard that was becoming most popular on September 11th.